Welcome!

Harvard Library collects, creates, and shares knowledge to advance the learning and global scholarship that is at the heart of Harvard. We value partnership with Harvard Summer School faculty in building a more interesting and just world through support for your research and teaching. Beyond what you will find on this guide, you may Ask a Librarian if you would like more information about the Library's support for Summer School faculty and instructors.

For Your Research

At Harvard Library, we aspire to be one of the world’s most comprehensive and thoughtful leaders in intellectual exploration. We embrace opportunities to share knowledge and contribute to global scholarship. Whatever materials you're seeking, gathering, organizing, or publishing, the following tips should help you get started with your research.

Find It

HOLLIS is Harvard Library's catalog and metasearch engine.

HOLLIS for Archival Discovery is your portal to Harvard Library's special collections and archives. Special collections and archives contain primary sources including letters, photographs, film and video, print items, digital materials, and objects.

HOLLIS Databases is a tool for identifying specialized search engines and large collections of digital materials. It is a curated subset of HOLLIS records, selected by Harvard librarians.

HOLLIS Images is the dedicated image catalog. It includes content from archives, museums, libraries, and other collections throughout Harvard University. 

Browse and read scholarly journals on your computer, phone, or tablet with Browzine.

The library offers worldwide Data & Government Information Collections and Expertise.

Organize It

Create Journal, Citation, and Search Alerts to keep track of the newly published research (and see this guide for tips on creating alerts in Web of Science). 

Pick a citation tool like Zotero, EndNote, or Overleaf to save references, keep notes, format citations, and more.

  • We offer Zotero training and personalized assistance with source documentation. To schedule a class or consultation, submit your request via the Citation Tools Help form.

Perma.cc prevents link rot for online sources.

In HOLLIS, check My Account/Renew (in the top-right after you sign in) to view your loans and requests.

  • If you have several items checked out, and forgot to add them to your citation manager, it is possible to export them in bulk from this feature: Go to Loans, select ü your titles, click the three dots ("Push to" actions), and then choose Export.

Learn about our Research Data Services and use our DMPTool to make a Data Management Plan to share and preserve your data while satisfying funding requirements.

Publish It

Create your profile on HarvardSites Drupal (formerly OpenScholar@Harvard) and distinguish yourself with an ORCID, a persistent digital identifier that you own and control, which you may connect with your professional information — affiliations, grants, publications, peer review, and more.

Sign this voluntary open-access license before you send any manuscripts to publishers. Signing the authorization form allows you to post your publications to your own website or to repositories like DASH.

Harvard's Open Scholarship and Research Data Services (OSRDS) can help you negotiate contracts with publishers and provide funds for publishing in fee-based open-access journals. To support the publication of your work as a member of the Harvard community, OSRDS runs the following programs:

Copyright First Responders can help you decide what’s safe to post or share.

Harvard’s Institutional Repository, DASH, is a safe and reliable way to self-archive your publications.

The Alexander and Diviya Magaro Peer Pre-Review program at Harvard IQSS can increase the quality of your scholarship and speed up the journal peer review process.

Partner alongside librarians to build digital collections and exhibits with CURIOSity.

Interested in using a web publishing platform such as Wordpress, Omeka, Scalar, Grav, or Mediawiki in your research or teaching? These tools are available for use by Harvard faculty, researchers, students, and staff via SHARE by HL (Harvard Library Share).

  • To learn more, read the Share policy, and contact the digital scholarship program manager, Matt Cook.

and more . . .

Scroll down to learn about the library's Specialized Support, below.

For Your Teaching

If your students will be working with sources beyond the assigned readings, please encourage them to get in touch with a research librarian. We can also create a research guide tailored to your course assignments, and/or visit your class to instruct students in using library resources.

To learn more and to arrange in-depth library support for your course, please contact Mikel Burt, Program Administrator for Services for Academic Programs.

Please refer your students to Library Resources for Summer School Students to get them off to a good start using the Harvard Library.

Course Librarians

Teach with Harvard Library! Librarians are available in person and on Canvas and ZOOM. We'll gladly tailor library and archival research classes to suit your needs. We can also help locate course materials and consult with you on instructional projects. Send your students to us for guidance and support with their research.

Consider designating a Canvas Course Librarian.

Do your students need help identifying scholarly sources? Librarians will create custom Research Guides for your classes. 

We invite you and your students to schedule Research Consultations for personalized guidance from a library specialist online or in-person. No question is too small. The list below suggests some kinds of support we offer to students:

  • selecting a topic and articulating a research question
  • finding background information
  • conducting a review of the literature
  • engaging with primary sources and data
  • surveying methods manuals
  • organizing and citing references
  • and more!

Ask a Librarian! Our staff of librarians, archivists, and subject matter experts are ready to answer questions for you and your students via chat and email.

Course Materials

The library can provide you and your students with access to books, articles, streaming media, and more. 

You can activate the Course Reserves service via Canvas ("Library Reserves" link) or HOLLIS ("Send to > RESERVES LIST" feature). It can handle almost any source, including streaming media, your own PDFs, and standard items.

  • Note: Reserves staff provide accessible PDFs of chapters and articles.
  • PRO TIP:  Add items directly from HOLLIS.
    • From a specific HOLLIS item, find the "send to" or "..." menu, and choose the Reserves List option.
    • Your reserves list must be activated (do this in Canvas).
    • For an individual book chapter, make sure to select a HOLLIS record for the chapter, not the whole book!

Funds are available to digitize selected materials for teaching; ask your library liaison.

Many films are only a click away. The Streaming Video guide includes information on finding films, requesting films, and copyright.

  • In cases where a film is only available as a physical copy and is not available for streaming, the library has staffing and equipment to accommodate student viewings for assignments or assist faculty screening films in the classroom. 
  • See Also: Using Published Video in Online Courses

3D scanning and consultation about Teaching and Learning with 3D Content can provide immersive experiences with primary sources that help bring your course material to life. Objects can range from very small to entire buildings!

Copyright First Responders can help you decide what’s safe to post or share.

Please refer your students to Library Resources for Summer School Students to get them off to a good start using the Harvard Library.

Special Collections

Teach with Special Collections: Discover, engage, and collaborate with us to help students use primary sources and understand material culture.

Partner alongside librarians to build digital collections and exhibits with CURIOsity.

3D scanning and consultation about Teaching and Learning with 3D Content can provide immersive experiences with primary sources that help bring your course material to life. Objects can range from very small to entire buildings!

Links to Share with Your Students

How to get started using the libraries

How to do research in... for discipline-specific research tips

Streaming Video @ Harvard for documentaries, feature films, theater productions, opera, video art, and more

Tech loan for phone chargers, tripods, VR headsets, and more

Large-format printing for student posters and projects

More Library Services & Tools

and more . . .

Scroll down to learn about the library's Specialized Support, below.

Specialized Support

Harvard Library is driven by fueling progress while remaining rooted in our deep history of intellectual leadership and expertise. This means we provide specialized services to support faculty endeavors, both on the vanguard of inquiry and along more traditional pathways.

Data

Harvard Library will support you along any step in The Research Lifecycle.

If you're seeking extant data, look no further: The Library offers worldwide Data & Government Information Collections and Expertise.

If you will be generating or eliciting data, learn about our Research Data Services and use our DMPTool to make a Data Management Plan to share and preserve your data while satisfying funding requirements.

Store your data in the Dataverse, Harvard's open online repository for research data.

The library provides one-on-one Visualization Support for Harvard faculty who would like to incorporate visualization in course assignments, teaching, or your own research.

  • In-class workshops on specific visualization tools—such as Tableau—are available for the Harvard community.

Request access to the Harvard Library Public Domain Corpus, a collection of approximately one million public domain books digitized from Harvard Library collections through a previous partnership with Google Books.

Digital Scholarship

We offer collaborative, cross-boundary training and support for digital scholarship.

Harvard Library's Digital Scholarship (DS) Program is here to support your work with emerging computational methods, engaging learning spaces, 3-D imaging, digital exhibits, and more.

  • Schedule a consultation with Matt Cook, digital scholarship program manager.

The Digital Scholarship Group (DSG) helps with web scraping, text mining, creating custom databases, coding, and more.

Request access to the Harvard Library Public Domain Corpus, a collection of approximately one million public domain books digitized from Harvard Library collections through a previous partnership with Google Books. 

Not sure where to begin? Your library liaison can put you in touch with the right people.

Evidence Synthesis and Literature Review Support

Also known as a literature review, evidence synthesis is a way of systematically integrating multiple studies on a topic to provide comprehensive insights. 

Maps

The Harvard Map Collection offers Harvard affiliates support for and access to a number of mapping and geographic information systems tools, as well as cartographic design support. 

The Harvard Map Collection provides assistance finding the spatial within your subject, and from there, developing ways to incorporate spatial reasoning into teaching or course assignments. We provide demonstrations to inspire and custom workshops to teach. We can highlight the potential of spatial tools especially when coupled with traditional paper materials.

Media and Visualization

Our specialists in learning technologies and multimedia can help you develop engaging and interactive media and help you hone your digital storytelling skills.

We loan computers, peripherals, video cameras, microphones, and other specialized technology through our Tech Loan service.

Cabot Media Studios and the Lamont Multimedia Lab are available to help instructors and students produce high-quality audio and video recordings, create data visualizations, and tell stories with a wide range of media.

The Virtual Media Lab provides tutorials and custom workshops to support you and your students with podcasting, video editing, Photoshop, Illustrator, multimedia assignments, and more. You and your students can join the Lab and be kept up to date on their programming.

Consult the Multimedia Production Resources guide to find and learn how to use audiovisual production tools at Cabot Science Library and Lamont Library, including:

  • cameras
  • microphones
  • studio spaces
  • and more

The library provides one-on-one Visualization Support for Harvard faculty who would like to incorporate visualization in course assignments, teaching, or your own research.

  • In-class workshops on specific visualization tools—such as Tableau—are available for the Harvard community. 

Large-Format Printing is available for is available for student posters and projects.

3D Printing is available to faculty and students at Cabot Science Library. Using Cabot's machines, you can print models that visualize your research, or produce objects for your research or class assignment.

3D scanning and consultation about Teaching and Learning with 3D Content can provide immersive experiences with primary sources that help bring your course material to life. Objects can range from very small to entire buildings!

Copyright First Responders can help you decide what’s safe to post or share.

Qualitative Research

We provide Qualitative Research Support, as well as training in the use of NVivo, qualitative data analysis software available to FAS affiliates.